Colonel Aaron Webb watched the display with its live images from the battle over a thousand miles away. The under-exposed picture from Kansas City shook with the shockwaves from brilliant detonations against the dark background. It was nighttime but light sources erupted onto the screen and blinded the camera’s iris. The only recognizable shapes were the turtle shell outlines of ballistic helmets. Simultaneously, harsh tinny voices and sounds came over the room’s speakers.
A scream exploded from the background noise, high pitched, eerily mechanical from digital distortion. A uniformed man lumbered into view. He tore off his helmet and reached down to his ballistic plate carrier. His mouth was wide open but the scream seemed disembodied, emanating from the dark shadows and flashes of light. The sound filled Webb’s ears as the image riveted his eyes.
The face took up the screen as it tilted back on its neck and stared horrified at a point directly above the camera. The corrugated wrinkles on the forehead, the deep rivets of the cheeks and corners of the mouth began to dissolve, to run like melting wax from the skin over the eyebrows and eyes, down onto the bridge of the nose, to slide like mud from the sides of the face toward the cheeks, then to collect in melting rivulets of flesh at the lower angles of the chin and jaws. The eyes bubbled like frying bacon and burst, spraying thick watery droplets onto the camera lens. The tongue, black and swollen, filled the mouth, engulfed the uneven picket of white teeth, pushed back the cracked and bleeding lips, and then burst like an exploding plum.
The picture shook and vibrated. Lights flashed by and the image whirled up toward the dark sky. Then it crashed onto the pavement, the impact breaking the scene into distracted, frozen pixels. Through the distortion, the lens focused on a burning M2 Bradley fighting vehicle belching flame and smoke from one side of an overpass. In the middle of the overpass, a young woman stood and took a few uncertain steps before collapsing. She crawled and stretched her hand out to one of the soldiers. The man stared and then grabbed her and held her against his vest. Blood began to run down the frame from top to bottom. The single scream was now a babble of gunfire, shouts, and static.
Again, the picture vibrated, but with the vibration came a low rumble, drowning out the background noise. The overpass seemed to blur, to distort, to shrink as if the world were contracting in on itself. Then everything exploded outward. Finally, there was a shock of pure white, and the picture darkened and died.
For a long time, no one spoke. The only sounds were the whirring cooling fans and spinning hard drives.
Old, pre-outbreak technology filled the conference room at the heart of MIT’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Widescreen monitors hung bolted to the walls with speakers mounted on desks. Racks of computer terminals and servers stacked one atop the other sat arranged like city blocks with streets of bundled cables crisscrossing the floor and ceiling. The men and women who battled daily to keep the equipment running all stood absolutely still, staring at the last of the monitors to lose its signal.
Webb stood at the front of the room. The monitor’s light cast his body into relief. A single thought played repeatedly in his mind: I should have killed her. I should have killed her. I should have killed her…
Webb turned toward the technicians and officers. Their eyes betrayed fright and disbelieve. They were like doomed animals caught in the headlights of an approaching vehicle. He shook his head in disgust and concentrated. At once, the monitors shut off and went black. The dim lights came on to full power. The technicians groaned and shielded their eyes. Some of them glanced at Webb and then quickly looked away. Slowly, they began to move, to look at one another, to shake off the paralysis.
Then a crash came from the back of the room. Webb spun around and spotted a figure sprawled on the floor. The man was dressed in a black trench coat that covered his dress blue uniform. The figure was Brigadier General John Martin.
“General!” Webb ran toward Martin, pushing away the junior officers clustering together for a better view.
Martin was breathing heavily. His mask had dislodged and barely held to the contours of his face. A glistening sheen of sweat covered his forehead.
“Everyone out,” Webb said.
“Sir—” A nearby lieutenant began.
“Get out!” Those closest to Webb scattered as if he had pointed a gun at them and fired. The room emptied. Webb looked around before removing and setting aside Martin’s mask. He wiped away the sweat from Martin’s brow and helped him out of his trench coat. Then he folded the coat and placed it behind Martin’s head like a pillow.
“Thank you, Aaron,” Martin said, softly.
Webb realized the trails of moisture moving down from Martin’s eyes were not beads of sweat, but tears. Martin began to tremble, and he turned his face away, half burying it in the fabric of the coat. Martin’s behavior alarmed Webb. It was not the first time Martin had collapsed. His right leg was prone to giving out without warning, and Webb suspected the pain, which Martin tried so hard to hide, sometimes overwhelmed him. Yet this was different. It was the first time it had happened in front of anyone else, and it was the first time Martin had not immediately recovered and asked for help back on his feet.
“I’ll get help,” Webb said.
“No.” The word was barely intelligible amidst a sob of grief.
Webb considered going anyway but he kept still and knelt at Martin’s side. He was unsure of what else he could do or say.
“I shouldn’t have let her go,” Martin cried. “I should have— I could have protected her. I promised. How could they do this?”
That girl, Webb thought. How can he care so much after all she’s done? After what she just did? He had knelt over her in the tunnel just beyond Cheyenne Mountain’s blast door. Alexandra Bedford had looked up at him with hate and disgust. If only he could go back, stand over her, and put a round in her forehead instead of stuffing a piece of cloth into her wound and pressing her hand over the bullet hole.
“Aaron,” Martin’s voice entered his thoughts.
“Yes, General?”
“You’re thinking we… I made a mistake.”
“Sir?”
“You’re thinking I should have ordered you to kill her. To kill… Alexandra.”
Martin had indeed entered his thoughts. And there it was again. The way he said that fateful name as if it were a precious gem, as if saying it with any harshness, judgment, or hate might tarnish its lustrous glow in his mind.
Webb kept silent. Martin knew him as well as anyone. Far better than anyone else.
He’s the only person who cares if I live or die! Webb thought this as a known fact without a trace of self-pity.
Martin cleared his throat. He was still slumped on the floor, looking anything but like a military officer. He was an old man. Webb did not have to see his face, frozen in a mask of burned scar tissue. Only his eyes lived, infinitely sad. Infinitely wise.
“I think it’s fair to say,” Martin went on hesitantly, “that no one could have predicted this… outcome. This result.”
It’s as if he were a father, explaining a big mistake to his son. Why he was fired from his job. Why he cheated on his mother. Why he is going to be sent to jail.
Instead of contempt or anger, Webb felt oddly privileged. Martin could speak to him as to a close family member, one with security clearances even. And Webb had precious little intimate contact with anyone.
“You didn’t have a choice,” Webb said.
“I could have told her the truth.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“She wouldn’t have believed you.” Martin reached for his mask several feet away but his fingers only brushed the edge. Webb sighed and handed him the mask. Martin took it, placed it over his face, and secured it. Webb saw his distorted reflection in its surface. He looked at the black membranes that covered and protected his wormlike eyes and the open top of his skull. He sometimes wished for a mask or even a face like Martin’s, for something that would give him the illusion of humanity.
Martin grunted in pain and sat up before scooting himself into the corner and resting with his back pressed against the wall.
“I’m sorry,” Martin said, regaining his composure.
Webb nodded. “You warned them this would happen,” he said, remembering the intense argument in the Pentagon a week earlier. It was why they were in Massachusetts and not Washington. It was why General David Anderson was in charge of the operation; Martin had opposed it and been replaced.
And it’s why I’m here, still alive and not a smear on the ground like the rest of our men, Webb thought.
“I wish I had been wrong,” Martin said.
“What do we do now?”
“We need her, Aaron. There’s no other way.”
“You think she survived that?” Webb gestured at one of the empty monitors. It was the screen where they had watched a young man slice open his own throat and a young woman slaughter an army.
“She’s alive,” Martin said.
“How do you know?”
Martin shook his head. “She’s alive.” There was a pause before he looked up. “Will you help me?”
Webb picked Martin up from the floor and braced him until he was steady on his feet. He kept close to the general as they walked to a table. Martin pulled out a chair and collapsed into it. Even the exertion of standing and walking a few feet had brought beads of sweat back to the edges of his mask. Webb waited until Martin caught his breath. “I can find her.”
Martin said nothing.
“I can kill her.”
“No!” The force of Martin’s voice surprised Webb. For a moment, he seemed ready to leap up to his feet. Webb took an involuntary step back. Then the tension disappeared from Martin’s frail body, and he slumped back in the chair. In a quieter voice, he said again, “No.”
“There were two thousand of our people in Kansas City.”
“I know.” Martin seemed again on the verge of tears. “Don’t you think I know?”
“Then why?”
Before Martin could answer, a nervous-looking lieutenant opened one of the conference room doors and peeked inside.
“What is it?” Webb asked, irritated.
“Sir, w-we… there was a… transmission from the Pentagon. From Washington, sir. The president wants to see General Martin.”
---
The candlelight flickered in the darkness, casting long shadows across the surface of an ornate oak desk. Michael Resnick sat behind that desk in an old leather chair, staring into the flame. Spread out in front of him and highlighted by the faint glow were maps of the Midwest. The closest map showed Kansas City, marked with blue and red military symbols, smudges of graphite and ink, and hastily written notes: a record of a battle that had become an apocalypse a thousand miles away.
So many dead. How did we let it come to this?
Resnick listened to the rain against the windows. The drapes were down, hiding the darkened city from view. A roll of thunder sounded from somewhere to the west. He imagined the building’s flag beating against the wind: a coiled white rattlesnake surrounded by stars on a field of blue. The flag was one of their oldest, but he wondered if it and the alliance it represented could remain standing against the storm tearing the country apart.
It was nearing midnight, and though was used to late hours, he struggled to keep from closing his eyes and falling asleep. The cold air helped to keep him awake, but only a little. Although he was in his early forties, he felt he had aged decades in the month since the Cheyenne Directorate’s attack on New York City.
“Mr. President?”
He looked up to see Daniel Miller, the White House chief of staff. He realized he had not heard the door open or the older man enter the office.
Resnick rubbed at his eyes and then stood up. “Is he here?”
“Just outside.”
“Thank you. Go ahead and send him in.”
Miller turned to leave, but Resnick said, “Dan?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“Any new reports?”
“No, sir.”
“And the power?”
“They’re working on the grid. But we should have the generators replaced in an hour.”
“I see. Thank you.”
Resnick circled the desk as Miller left the room. He picked up the candlestick and moved to the coffee table in the center of the office. Even more maps lay strewn across the wooden surface: Topeka, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, and Cheyenne Mountain. Altogether, they represented a path to victory plotted during a long week of restless nights. The maps showed detailed battle plans meant for units now missing in action.
Can we still do it? Can he do it?
He set the candlestick on a pile of reports and then sat on one of the couches surrounding the table.
The heavy clomp on the floorboards announced his guest’s presence before the man appeared in the doorway. Resnick turned to see the shadowed figure limp into the room.
“General, thank you for coming on such short notice,” Resnick said. “Please, have a seat.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” Martin maneuvered into the formation of chairs and couches around the coffee table. He wore a trench coat with a scarf around his neck. He stopped in front of the couch opposite Resnick and then slowly lowered himself into the cushion.
“I see someone forgot to pay the electricity bill,” Martin said.
Resnick chuckled. “Budget cutbacks.”
“What happened to the generators?”
“They went down after five minutes. God knows how old those things are.”
“I can sympathize.”
Resnick leaned forward and studied Martin’s face. A faint smile showed on what remained of the general’s lips. The shadows partially hid the scars and burns, but his eyes reflected the light from the candle as he studied the maps spread out before him. Resnick wondered if Martin preferred the dark. It was the first time Martin had entered his office without the mask or prosthetic.
“Do you know why I called you here?” Resnick said.
Martin’s gaze shifted up. “I believe so, Mr. President.”
“Have you been briefed on Kansas City?”
“I was observing from MIT.”
“What do you think happened?”
Martin looked back down at the table and shook his head. “I couldn’t say.”
“You must have some idea,” Resnick urged. He waited but Martin offered no response. After a moment, Resnick cleared his throat. “Did you know my advisors told me to demand your resignation after New York?”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“They said you were too close to Bedford and that we couldn’t trust you to lead if it came to a war with the Directorate.”
“They might have a point.”
Resnick began to smile but then realized there was no humor in Martin’s voice. “I rejected their advice for a reason. Despite the casualties and the damage we suffered in New York, you made the right decision letting their team go.”
“I had little choice in the matter.”
“No, John. Hostage or not, that team was out on the roof for almost an hour before they flew off. You could have had that Osprey shot down before it landed. You could have positioned snipers in another building to shoot the guns right out of their hands. Believe me, I read an entire report that denounced your decision and outlined dozens of ways you could have stopped them from escaping. But you let them go.”
“Yes.”
“And do you know what those reports failed to consider?”
To Resnick’s surprise, Martin answered at once, “Alexandra Bedford.”
“Exactly. We would have had a disaster on our hands if you had tried to hold her. Instead of Kansas City gone, it might have been New York. I believe Bedford’s daughter is responsible for what happened.”
“And you still believe I made the right decision by letting her go?”
“Keeping her as a prisoner would have ended with even more casualties, caused by her or an attempt by the Directorate to get her back. And given that Colonel Webb managed to shoot Bedford… letting them escape proved to be quite useful.”
“And so now…”
Resnick leaned even closer toward Martin until he could feel the faint heat radiating from the candle’s flame. He gestured at the maps, plans, and reports before pointing straight at Martin. “Now I need you to take command. I need you to end this conflict, John. We lost a lot of good people last night. I’m told we can no longer take Colorado Springs. I don’t believe that’s true. If our intelligence is correct, the Directorate suffered just as much as we did at Kansas City. We’re going to hit Topeka tonight while they’re regrouping and then we’re going to keep going until we take Cheyenne Mountain.”
Martin stared at one of the maps closest to him before offering a noncommittal, “I see.”
“Will you accept command of the operation?”
Resnick was surprised to see a conflicted look on Martin’s face. Even though he had refused to ask for the general’s resignation, the military had assigned Martin to an empty corner of the Pentagon while a lieutenant colonel took control of New York’s forces. Martin had been like a ghost since then.
“John, we need you. Will you take command?”
A flash of lightning filtered through the drapes, casting away the shadows covering Martin like a thick cloak. Resnick almost looked away but managed to hold his gaze steady. Martin showed no signs he had noticed. Then in a whisper barely audible over the wind and rain battering the office window, he replied, “Yes, Mr. President.”
Resnick leaned back into the couch. “Good. I know you won’t let us down.”
Resnick began to push himself up, but he hesitated as Martin said, “Sir?”
“Yes?”
Martin was looking into the flame at the tip of the candle. His eyes, reflecting the glow, seemed less alive than they had been minutes earlier. They were now dull and tired. “What about Alexandra?”
Resnick wished he could read Martin’s thoughts. He knew the general had a history with Bedford. Martin had come to the NEA in the wake of the outbreaks after refusing a position with the Directorate. That much was common knowledge but the rest lay hidden away, buried deeper than even Resnick could dig. No record of Bedford existed in the Pentagon’s database, and Martin’s files had no mention of the two ever serving together. Their relation was a mystery, much like the scars covering Martin’s face.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe he is too close to Bedford and that girl. But what other choice is there?
Resnick took a deep breath. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the pictures we’re starting to get from inside Kansas City. If not, I’m sure you’ll see them soon. The Directorate is playing with fire. If she was the one that wiped out the city, we don’t have the luxury of trying to take her alive. I don’t see any other solution.”
Martin closed his eyes. He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he looked up at Resnick and said, “There’s another way.